


freedom

by dolphins



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, angsty! angst, hand holding, lil scoop of fluff, potential mental illness, yuuri finding himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 16:37:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8408914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolphins/pseuds/dolphins
Summary: Yuuri struggles with his own self-worth, trying to pick himself up after his devastating loss.





	

**Author's Note:**

> okay- i stayed up to 7am writing this. i literally couldn't sleep until it was out of my brain. do you ever get stories like that?
> 
> so yes- it is in a second hand pov. which is SO much fun to write in once in a while! hope its okay. 
> 
> caution: potential trigger warning in regards to mental illness. x

1\. You fall.

Have you ever felt so nervous you think it's quite possible you could die on the spot?

Every single cell in your body is quaking, tissue rattling around tense bones, veins and arteries pumping with enough speed to put rockets to shame. Your organs feel like they are failing you, running on pure endorphins alone.

It feels like this is the most important thing in the world. It's not really, when you start to think of poverty, and war, and your family. But when you step out onto the rink, man, there's nothing that thrusts this weight- this pressure onto your shoulders.

You are at the top of a cliff and Viktor Nikiforov has helped you climb here. Over at the sides, under shaded trees you see your family, waving with smiles. You see Minako and Yuuko, determination and anxiety in equal bouts; there's the triplets, and you can't tell which of the three seems more excited.

Perhaps you can make it to the other side, that's a thought that creeps up from time to time. When you think your muscles might just be strong enough, when you might just have the music fully encaptured into every movement you make. It is something akin to self-belief, you are possibly good enough after all. Perhaps your careers hasn't just been a series of flukes.

Then the doubts, the smothering, suffocating anxieties come along. They eat those thoughts up like your mother's katsudon, leaving the bowl empty. You feel your heart constricted and heavy in a heaving chest.

You jump. It's all you have left, you suppose. Everyone is watching and they are all waiting, praying with every crossed-ligament they have that you will reach the other side.

But you fall.

Your limbs tangle up and you tip over the edge, falling harder onto the cold ice, and faster than your place down the scoreboard.

Silence is all you can hear from the bottom but the only thing you've injured is your pride. You almost wish you were injured in a way, so you could have some other excuse to quit other than self-pity.

"We were all watching," your mother tells you over the phone.

She is always proud of you, smiling even as you crumple up to pieces with failure. She doesn't quite see you how you see you. Her son is a competitive skater, living the dream life; doing what he loves for a living. You only wish that was good enough for you.

A raging lunatic tries to kill you mid-emotional breakdown. An angry, firecracker of a person, someone who is hooded like a gangster but when you recover from the sudden heart attack, you are even more shocked to see the youth on this mad-man's face.

"Retire already!" he spits into your face.

You wish you were witty enough to make a comment about the damn youth of today, but you aren't much older than him. And you don't want to get your head kicked in by a boy barely grazing his teens.

However, you hate to disappoint, so you informally retire and return home. It isn't actually because of the kid, that's just the icing on the cake. You simply can't see yourself climbing up that cliff again. It's too high and your body is much too fatigued.

Viktor Nikiforov asks you for a photograph.

Perhaps that is the icing instead, or maybe the cherry- sweet, juicy, round and humiliating. Why on Earth would you want a photo to encapture your shame? Keep this moment locked in your mind forever?

Viktor helped him get to where he was and look how he undid it all, like a ball of tangly wool. Chucked away all of his hard work, all of his training- he didn't deserve to be in the same room as the man.

Admittedly, you get a bit depressed over this particular fact. You make your bed down at the bottom, comfortable in the dirt and rubble; you aren't moving anytime soon.

When you return home, your family make a huge fuss. Man, it's like you are a celebrity and you feel embarrassed by the homecoming banners and too-long hugs.

You feel like a light has gone out inside of you. However that sounds a tad cliche. And you are neither a lantern, nor are you completely dead inside. You are just... different.

Things have changed. You aren't a figure skater anymore and it's been hard to readjust the way you see yourself. It's hard to start becoming Yuuri when the skating is taken away, it feels like a loss of a limb; phantom pains making you cringe when you think about it.

"I've missed you very much," your mother tells you as you help her with the cooking.

She has kind eyes and it stings guilt in your nerves. Damn, you should have called more.  
"I've missed you too," you admit with a smile and chop the vegetables in front of you with shaking hands.

It's admittedly pleasant to eat as much katsudon as you like without concern. You've long since halted any desire to maintain your weight. Instead you're focusing on trying to maintain your head. There's so much empty space when you aren't thinking of skating, you begin to wonder what on Earth you are used to fill it with.

At night, when you are lying in bed, Viktor voices his opinion.

"Why are you giving up so easily?" his scowling face would ask you, three versions of the same expression would intimidate anyone.

You roll onto the other side and pull the pillow to your ear. It's better if you don't listen to him. Perhaps tomorrow you should take those down too. You never do though and listen to their taunts every night.

Somewhere underneath it all, there was a Katsuki Yuuri, you are almost certain of it. So you spend your days trying to find him.

You take walks late at night, when the thoughts get a bit loud and Viktor is turning a bit cruel. Stars are pretty and plentiful, enough to take your mind off the rut you've got yourself in. Are you too young to be having a midlife crisis?

When you reach the docks, an agony clenches your chest. An insufferable pain that drags you to your knees. Is it a heart attack? No. It's sheer, unadultered heartbreak. There's nothing you miss more than skating, it was your entire world and now it's gone. Underneath, it's like you are all hollow and empty- and you hate it.

Lumpy, hot tears splutter from your eyes down into your clenched teeth. Salty as the sea and as bitter as regret.

Crying into your fists, in the middle of the dark street somehow feels more pitiful than your breakdown in the bathroom stall. You half-want an angry Russian teenager to scream at you and force you to sort your shit. It's too open, exposed, but when you start you can't quite stop.

Oh god, oh dear god, what on Earth are you going to do?

 

For a few days, you spend the day in bed. It really is as depressing as it sounds. You keep the curtains closed and you don't shower or change. When your dad comes up, he tries opening the curtains to release the stale air choking your room but you gently shoo him away.

So exhausted and tired. It's like you have ran for miles and miles. You eat your favourite snacks under the covers but even they aren't hitting the spot.

When you catch Viktor's eye across the room, he looks disappointed. But you reason that Viktor has never experienced real, proper failure. He doesn't know what it's like to get his ass handed back to him.

But you feel uneasy, unsettled by his judgment. "I'm not good enough," you snap at him, throwing your duvet back in a rage.

He looks positively smug, radiant and beaming with trophies, medals, fans- the very pinnacle of success. Viktor has made it to the other side and is their fucking king.

"You aren't going to become successful lying in bed. There are no awards gave for how long you can stay under your duvet," Viktor tells you, but deep down you get that it's really just your own thoughts. Somehow in Viktor's voice they feel much more palpable.

The next day, you try a little harder to function as a human being. It isn't easy, but you are trying your best.

Part of you wants to return to bed. Instead you take the triplets out for desserts and for a walk around the town. You pretend not to notice the silent elation on your family's face as it only concentrates your guilt a little more.

It's pleasant actually, the sun spilling long fingers over your skin, hair blowing and tickling your face. You watch the kids run around together, looking free and contented.

They play pranks on you, running up behind you and scaring the absolute shit out of you. Saying you didn't squeal was a lie. You do. But you laugh like hell afterwards and they cling and climb onto of you, like three little monkeys.

"You are so funny, Yuuri!"

Perhaps you aren't just your placement on a scoreboard. It should have been obvious all along. The flickering thought resides in your head and you keep it safe, tentatively clutching it like your very life source.

 

When you get home, you spend a lot less time in bed. You start thinking a bit more about the future. At some stage you will need a job, maybe even one outside of the onsen.

It is incredibly unsettling, even the very thought of it stirs up all these angry demons. "No way!" they shout, making you jump.

"How can you throw away everything you have ever dreamed about?" you look into the mirror are start to feel maddened by your own eyes... they are positively dead.

When you hit the wall, your knees go down too. One step forward, and two steps back.

You don't think you can get up this time, the bath behind you is still running, your tears dripping onto your trousers. Falling, and falling, and oh fuck, just when you think you have hit the bottom, there is another layer below.

"Yuuri!" Minako is thumping at the door but your limbs feel too heavy, too sore to get up and let her in. How can you move freely when there is so much despair, so much hatred clogging up every single square of volume inside of you.

She bursts through the door and collects you up like post, clutching you into her chest and cursing like a sailor.

"What is going on, you idiot," she says hysterically and you feel even worse, for making her worry. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you sob into her jumper.

"Shhhhh," she is trying to hush your distress to a minimum, probably incredibly out of her comfort zone.

But she is doing well enough, rocking you sideways and you try to collect up those little bits of yourself that you dropped around the floor. "I don't know what to do now. I don't know how I come back from this,"

"It isn't going to just happen, Yuuri," she is brushing away your hair, softer than she has ever been with you- softer than the pair of you will ever speak of again. "There isn't any failure in falling down, only in not getting back up,"

"If skating is what you love, why are you still sitting here?"

But the truth is you are scared. Skating is your old ex. A past lover. You want to catch up, you're still in love after all, but you have both changed. You aren't the same- failure has left you uneasy and bruised and you don't know how to act around them anymore.

You are looking up at the cliff again, how steep the fall was. Pain is still radiating in your bones but the notion is there. A tiny ledge is poking out and you stare at it until your eyes blur.

Viktor Nikiforov helped you once, and fate is funny in these kinds of ways. Because he helps you yet again.

You are scrolling online and come across a video. It's Viktor and you barely think, clicking it as fast as your own pulse accelerates.

He becomes a butterfly on the rink. A contortionist. A seducer. A king. He owns the stage, as a performer, and every person in the room, as a master. Weakened, man, you feel so weakened by it all.

You don't realise how close you've been leaning forwards until your nose grazes the screen. A close-up of Viktor appears and a jolt of electricity courses in your veins.

A rush of blood, endorphins, something- you don't have the slightest clue, explodes in your brain. Your neurones can barely keep up. It's a possession, a supernatural takeover of your very soul. That is the only explanation for why you feel like- like... this.

Viktor is whispering in your ears again, but you aren't quite focused on that as his ghostly hands slide around your neck and graze your chest.

Hot, your body is far too hot. You need air, somewhere away from this sauna of a bedroom. Even that's not enough, you leave your house and run out into the snowy street despite your mother's calls.

You run, and run, despite the fact you simply aren't cut out for running anymore. Only freezing, cold ice can cool this burning fire that's scolding your skin.

Viktor's shadow has hands slipped in yours, dragging you to the Ice Castle. This is your home, he is telling you in a low, sultry tone. Why are you denying yourself such a simple, biological urge. Your head is exploding, delusions and hallucinations and lack of sleep. You need skating, it isn't just a fucking hobby.

Viktor guides your skates to your feet and you slip them on like a second skin. Yuuko is there, somehow you recall talking to her and the triplets. But there's a wall between you and the real world. You are there with Viktor and he is tugging you this way and that.

He lifts your arms up, you are weightless and at his mercy. His ghostly fingers carry you when you feel your body slack. Then you start to cool, the insane temperature starting to break as Viktor's apparition engulfs your entire form. Like some sort of wedding veil.

When he moves, you do too. You are doing his routine, done to the very moment of inhale, exhale, inhale. Please don't quit, he is begging you through every grasp of your hands at the empty air. You deserve more than this, he pleads when you kick out your step sequences. And when you jump, and spin, and spin, until you can't feel your fingertips, he promises to catch you if you ever fall again.

Okay, you breathe into your clenched hands when you both have finished. You feel like you've sucked dry every reserve of energy in your body, every droplet of liquid sweated out. Okay, I will try again.

Yuuko and the triplets have stars in their eyes. You hear the wall shatter and Viktor fades, their voices bursting through. "You were brilliant, Yuuri!" you suddenly realise what has happened.

"I want to skate again," you announce and your face feels beet red. "I have tried and tried but as long as I still can, I refuse to live without it,"

If Yuuko looked any more proud, you think you might actually cry. Messy, emotion-tears you think the triplets could live without seeing.

When you go home, you flop down onto a chair and scoff all of the katsudon your mother can make. Katsuki Yuuri is home, at last. And when you go to bed that night, your posters of Viktor are silent; thinking.

 

2\. You get back up.

Overnight, you become an internet sensation in perhaps the greatest comeback imaginable.

A medley of emotions invade your constricted chest as fast as the notifications on your phone. This is bad, so very bad. It feels like an invasion, like someone has intruded on this incredibly personal encounter with Viktor. Like the whole world has seen you naked.

You are unbelievably flustered, an in between wanting to strangle a certain group of children, you want to hide under your bed and never come out. Viktor Nikiforov can piss right off, you won't be dragged out this time.

"Catch yourself on," Minako drags you out by the ankles. "This is a good thing! Everyone is talking about how brilliant you were!"

Brilliant? Are you hearing correctly. Surely they aren't talking about you? But they are. But it wasn't you, not really, when it was Viktor steering the ship. You were an innocent passenger, or even better- the boat.

The praise is- it's- woah, you can shake your head again and again, until you're dizzy but it won't dilute the shock. You feel all floaty, kind of like a sea of butterflies are in your tummy. That tiny flicker of belief has caught its flame onto the surrounding area and starts to engulf your thoughts.

You are looking up at the top again, thinking and wondering about starting the climb. And then Viktor comes along. The actual, real-life Viktor.

Standing, fully-naked in your line of view.

For a split second you want to die, right there, right then. There is no language, or formula, or philosophical theory on this planet that could make this resonate in your head.

Hang on-

"I am going to become your coach," Viktor flicks out a long, toned arm. A flamboyous gesture Yuuri can see is not just restricted to his skating, rather it is embedded in his very DNA.

"What?"

Words simply aren't enough. You have your idol standing in the flesh in front of you, offering up his wisdom on a plate. You suppose this is what a second-coming of a prophet may feel like. This is the rapture, the apocalypse, and Viktor has chosen you.

You are blessed, luck having fallen well and truly onto your shoulders. Viktor is no longer a figure way up above, or a ghostly figure in your ear; no longer a pair of judging eyes on your wall when you screws up. Rather, Viktor cuddles his dog when he sleeps, he is quite perhaps one of the messiest eaters you know, and he watches you skate like you are absorbing his entire attention.

You feel like he is captivated by you, and it's bizarre. So much so, you don't quite believe it. But he doesn't go easy on you, he gives you a push up but expects you to climb this yourself.

"You need to get fitter," he tells you. "If you want to be in peak condition for the Grand Prix,"

Yes, that's right. The Grand Prix. You don't know how that escalated but in your heart, deep down, you know you can't rest easy when you honestly believe you could have done better.

"Okay. I will,"

He forces you out of bed at 6am. But you are lucky you make it in at 9am, sprinting all the way there and calling it a warm-up jog.

You work, you aren't going to deny that or beat around the bush. If you want to skate, you need to work your ass off. You lift weights and stretch your muscles. Minako pitches in to give a hand so you regain the flexibility you once had and maybe shed a little weight.

Skating was such an isolating, lonely sport. You only have yourself in that rink and day in and day out at training. You never noticed before until Viktor filled in those gaps.

"Take a minute to get your breath back," he rubs your shoulder, wiping away a blanket of sweat from your forehead. His touching is electrifying on your skin, very different to the imaginary, ghosts of touch you once thought you felt. You actually feel his blood pumping underneath his skin, it's making you sweat more.

"I think you've done enough for today," he says softly in your ear. "Well done,"

When you both are walking back to the onsen, it's already dark out. Streetlamps light the way like beacons in the sea. Stepping stones on a silky, inky lake. Viktor slips his hand into yours like it's nothing, closing his fingers in between the gaps of your very soul.

You try to disguise jumping out of your own skin and he looks at you amused, chuckling with low-lidded, mischievous eyes. "What?" he teases. You squeak, "Nothing!" while blushing up a storm. This is... new. It is exciting. Something tentative that you are a bit scared to really think about.

Just a little coach-pupil hand holding. Everyday, average stuff, you know.

 

It is a lot easier to get out of bed in the morning now. You feel the climb getting a little easier, you are stronger than you were and you are regaining your stamina. Finally, after a final push, you are ready to take on the ice.

You run all the way there, adrenaline coursing and carrying you most of the way like clouds around your ankles. You are going home, straight into the arms of your old lover. They are waiting for you, just the way you bitterly left them, arms open.

Viktor is waiting. If that isn't another motivation factor, you write yourself off as a lost cause. Come on, a little further, you beg yourself and your feet pound and pound. You can, you actually can, the top of this damn cliff is in sight.

However, history has a funny way of repeating itself, and you are drop-kicked through the doors of Ice Castle by a furious teenager, with a sea of reporters watching.

"Come back to Russia and coach me!" Yuri all but demands. He is... a character. But you can't help but watch, open-eyed in awe.

Fire seems to swallow up his entire aura. There seems to be a hell of a lot more than just hormones going on in that kid's head, in your humble opinion.

But your bubble has been well and truly popped, this is it, you suppose. You prepare to say goodbye to Viktor. After all, why the hell would he stick around if he's getting a better offer.

Instead, true to form, Viktor pits you both against each together like a pair of fighting mongrels. Yuri bares his teeth, growling in circles but really, you just want Viktor to scratch your head a little and feed you katsudon.

In order to achieve this however, you have to well and truly slay a 15 year old kid in a fight to the death- on ice. Taking your rightful place on the throne beside your king, sorry, -coach. Perhaps the hand holding has gone to your head a little.

Two pieces of music are your weapons. You think you've drawn the short straw and get Eros. A million miles South of your comfort zone. It's sexy, and zesty, and... everything you are not.

"Why are you struggling with the arrangement I gave you?" Viktor asks you when it's just the two of you, sitting side by side on the bench by the rink.

You are fiddling with your cup of tea and he does that thing. Groping your chin with one deliciously, delicate, pianist-finger. Forcing you to look at his blinding eyes.

"You need to work out what Eros means to you, that's what will amplify any talent you do have," he is a little bit of a back-handed complimenter, and you love it. It's more appealing than empty flattery.

"I don't- I don't have any Eros," you admit.

He looks striken. Like the very thought hadn't occured to him. "Of course you do," he says simply, denying you the very luxury of being right even once. "I happen to think you have lots of Eros,"

You can't even hide the disbelief in your face and Viktor reads you like a flipping book.

Taking your hand, he slips his in with a comfortable sigh. He leans back and takes a sip of tea. "I don't understand why you see yourself in what I can only guess is a very negative light,"

You open your mouth to protest and he cuts you off.

"There's just no confidence sometimes, and I think that is one of your greatest downfalls," he says softly. "If you don't find a way to feel okay in your own skin- you will always be held back,"

A lump builds in your throat and you ignore it until it goes away, Viktor rubbing soft circles over your knuckles.

He's right.

You quickly realise you need to do something about this, and fast, or you will not only lose your last chance at skating- but you'll lose Viktor too.

Runs through the town, movies and books and art, research upon research, and practicing until your lungs give out. You're searching, so desperately, for some sort of inspiration or clue as to what your Eros is.

Half-dead you stare into your meal. Man, what you wouldn't do for a delicious katsudon. It steams your glasses up and you revel in the goregous scent, before-

-That's it!

You practically leap to your feet, rattling the table. You feel your feet digging into the soil, you are almost there and you can practically touch the top.

Ignoring the scoffs from Yuri, who just for the record has moved into the onsen, despite hating your guts. You focus on the way Viktor's features are blanketed by a comforting kind of warmth.

"I'm going to become a super, tasty katsudon!" 

 

3\. You take the leap.

Standing at the edge of the rink feels momentous again. Like something much greater than yourself is building in your chest, itching to escape through every fibre of your being.

Bloody nails, beaten black and blue, you scrabble at the dirt until you are on the top. This could go a variety of different ways, your mind tending to circulate the more negative ones.

Yuri stole the hearts of every single person in this room and it's your job to steal them back.

When you take to the ice, the strum of the guitar drowns out your sudden rapid pulse. Part of you prays for the other Viktor, but you can't simply imitate in the man's shoes your entire life. 

"Please watch me," you told Viktor, and you hugged him like a desperate plea to stay and a heartfelt goodbye at the same time. 

"Of course," he said, and he always does if you are honest. You feel the weight of his gaze on you, but it isn't suffocating, or judging, like your posters could be when you screwed up. It instead wraps itself around your entire form, enveloping you and lifting you up. It is making your body lighter. But not in the way old Viktor used to, you are more than a passive body for a delusion to exist in, you become yourself in every sequence of that performance and step over skins as you kick them off.

Hands that suddenly feel like yours creep seductively down your hips. A tilt of the head, a flick of the hair. You grab your Eros by the throat and own every inch of it.

You're bent over the edge, looking down at the gaping abyss, yet you aren't trembling. Your family are still under the shaded tree, Yuuko, Minako, the triplets, waving. Yet you aren't scared, exhilarated- positively, but when you lock eyes with Viktor you see he's waiting down for you at the bottom. 

To catch you if you fall, like he always has done- in some form or another.

Femininity feels closer to your Eros than anything else you've tried, and every move you make is sultry, dripping with carnal passion. Each leap dragging the audience deeper and deeper into your web.

You take one foot off the edge, and jump.

For a second, you skid. It almost seems like you are going to spiral into a mess on the ice. But you catch yourself and keep going. Around and around and around, you go. 

Stars are under your closed eyelids, each sound wave seeping into your pores, the notes navigating every movement until it's simply muscle memory. And the crowd is on fire, Yuri a smoky cloud in the distance.

You catch sight Viktor, arms open ready to catch you, and instead- you fly.

Will you reach this mysterious other side? You can't quite answer that. But you win Hot Springs On Ice against Yuri and- and Viktor.

"I love katsudon!" he beams, dragging you into his chest and you fall with a thump. Two hands lock into yours, you pretend you aren't swooning but you so incredibly are.

Perhaps you won't ever reach this distant goal you're striving for, but you look around at the screaming crowd. You spot your family and friends, as proud as punch, and Viktor clinging to your hands. And you decide that maybe that's okay.

You will keep doing what you love until you can do no more. Until the inspiration is zapped dead from you like an oasis in the desert.

Keep jumping, and falling, and climbing back up because perhaps that is the only thing you can do until you fly.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i wrote it all in a burst of a few hours so i am sorry if you hate it.
> 
> please drop me some of your wonderful thoughts! i take any and all thinkings! they are almost as good as cookies! :) x


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